Elements of architecture

From Vitruvius (firmitas, utilitas, venustas), to Gottfried Semper (hearth, roof, enclosure, mound) and Le Corbusier (The Five Points), the repertoire of Architecture could be seen as a history of discrete functional elements deployed by specific geographical situations. Has our postmodern condition ruptured the stability of these once-identifiable elements, or do they still persist, albeit in degraded, if not debased, forms? 

Developed in tandem with the 2014 Venice Biennale (Fundamentals, also curated by Rem Koolhaas), this publication is a deconstruction of the current kit of architectural parts and how political, actuarial, and regulatory structures led to their present (possibly debased) conditions. Following a GSD studio, I was invited to continue working full-time alongside Rem and AMO in preparation for the Biennale and the publication of Elements, guiding a subsequent group pf GSD students and assuming a global editorial role as the resident ‘practicing architect’ of the team.

Walls (or partitions), not originally part of the project brief, were discovered to have a fascinating alternate history subverting their original defensive and structural uses: an element once defined by structural utility took on representational role (if not a more sinister one), empowered by such seemingly peripheral industries as the NFPA, real estate, and the gypsum board trade. The wall binds the extensive and the particular; an abstract, hidden system that manages adjacencies—privacy, visibility, safety, comfort, the elements themselves—through intervals in its section, the immediacy of it surface belies the power it yields over the spaces we inhabit.

With AMO/OMA and Harvard Graduate School of Design

Editor (with James Westcott, Editor-in-chief; Rem Koolhaas, Author; Irma Boom, Designer)

Published 2018 (Taschen) and 2014 (Marsilio)